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Monthly Archives: September 2012

Holy crap, you guys. Hoooollllyyyy crap!! So if you didn’t read my previous link about what the CFT (Crossfit Total) is all about, I guess I’ll give a brief summary. The CFT is used to asses an athlete’s functional strength. Meaning, there are very few situations in your everyday life where you will be in a bench press situation, but picking up something really effing heavy from the ground, or carrying something heavy on your back are a little more plausible. The CFT is the sum of the best of three attempts of one rep for the back squat, strict overhead press, and deadlift, preformed in that order, and all done during a single session. You should reach the point of failure at the last attempt for each lift.

So I went into this without having squatted actually at Crossfit in months (since Mondays are squat days and I have dance that night) and have somehow missed deadlifting over the course of a few months, minus a few WODs here and there. I just PRd my press this week, so I wasn’t expecting any huge (or any at all) gains on that. But I figured my goal was to get over 300. 115 BS, 57.5 OHP, 135 DL would put me at 307.5, so as long as I could hold it together and do what I’m normally capable of, I’d get past 300.

Well, I ended up PRing my backsquat by 10lbs, and my deadlift by 40lbs. WHAT?! And I could have done more on the deadlift too, but I had maxed out my reps attempts.

Crossfit Total: 357.5

Backsquat: 115(safety)-120-125(f)-125(PR by 10lbs!!). Really got some great tips on depth and technique. I need to try to get in there Mondays.

Strict Press: 57.5(safety)-60(f)-60(f)-60(f). This was expected. I’m just glad I could get 57.5 up solidly again.

Deadlift: 135(safety)-155-165-175(PR by 40lbs!!). Deadlifting felt really really good. Wish I had time to get higher.

Also, that means I squatted my bodyweight. Hell yes. Well, minus 1.4lbs, but whatever. Close enough! Man, I am so happy with this. I was hoping that I’d be able to push past 300, but never dreamed that it would be that far, considering how long it’s been since I deadlifted for weight. So great. I’m freaking elated. According to this chart, I’m sitting above intermediate. Feeling so good right now. I’m sad that I missed this last year, so I don’t have anything to compare it to. I know what I was at for each of those lifts, so I guess that’s close enough. And wow, what a big difference.

And now we are just about ready to leave to go camping with some friends for the night, and then zip lining and white water rafting tomorrow! Adventure weekend! Yay!

Today was press day. After last week’s poor performance, I tried desperately not to psych myself out about it, in either direction. On one hand, I felt as if I could absolutely crush it, and hit new PRs, since I’ve been working on pushing stuff all week since. But on the other hand, I was worried that since I didn’t get in as many reps overhead last week that I’d have a hard time getting 55 up again this week as well. I tried to keep a very neutral mind, truly being “okay” with whatever numbers I was going to put up.

Strength:

Strict Press 1-1-1-1-1: 57.5(PR!!)-60(f)-57.5-57.5-57.5-57.5. I’ll take that. I think I got in my head about the 60lbs, thinking “omg, that’s 3lbs away from being half my bodyweight.” I’m hoping that when we do the CFT this weekend I’ll be able to hit 60. We have 3 tries, so I’ll be sure to get a 57.5 in, just incase I can’t get to 60. But the last two 57.5’s weren’t terribly difficult to get up. So hell yes. New PR, and back on track. I’m still going to work on all of the pressing stuff, especially with tomorrow being a rest(aka school) day.

WOD for Time: 12:22

30 Pull-ups: one thin band for assistance, Rx reps, scaled for assist. (Really great video linked, breaking down kipping.)

This WOD was nuts. Probably one of my least favorites, to date. I underestimated how cooked my legs were going to be from the row, so the thrusters were pretty awful, but manageable broken up into 4 sets of 10. And the pull-ups…even though I did a WOD this week (or last week? I can’t remember) that had 10 pull-ups per round for 3 rounds that I did unassisted, that’s very different for me than doing 30 in a row. I did the first couple unassisted and then jumped on a band and could barely get sets of 4 from then on. My elbow is still a little sore from yesterday’s snatches, which I think I determined was from not having a wide enough grip.

#sorryimnotsorry flexing for the camera.

I’m pretty happy that my strength improvements are physically showing on my body, as well as my weights/times at the box. Look at my triceps bulging! But when it comes down to it, I’m exponentially more proud that I was able to press 57.5lbs overhead after the failure I had last week, and that I PR’d my rowing time, and that I am so close to being able to yet another WOD as Rx’d. Also, blogs without pictures are boring, and this helps me document my numerical and physical gains, as well. But seriously guys, so excited about that 2.5lbs PR on the press. That’s about a 5% gain! Wacky. Fingers crossed for 60lbs this weekend!

Today was great, but I’m exhausted. Hopefully I’ll get a good night of sleep tonight and not die during tomorrow’s WOD!

Strength:

EMOTM for 10 Minutes

2 Squat Snatch: 45lbs. Really worked on the shrug at the top of the pull, and speed getting under the bar. I tweaked my elbow weirdly at the 5th round, so that impacted me a bit, but overall they felt pretty good.

2 Handstand Negatives: to 2 ABMATs. I’ve been working on these for my press, and they felt pretty good today. At round 5 when I tweaked my elbow I dropped down to 1 per round.

WOD for Time: 8:30 Rx

This was awesome. The last time I did “Annie” was on June 21st, and when I had just gotten the hang of double-unders. My last time was 12:09. I bested that by over 3 and a half minutes today!!! So great. My double-unders were on point, and my sit-ups went as fast as I possibly could. I know I slowed down in the 40 and 30 rounds, but then picked up speed again in the 20 and 10. I’d like to get this down to 7 minutes.

I went to see my favorite band in DC last night, after finding out about it completely last minute. So glad I randomly checked their website yesterday morning! Anyway, it left me with a really sore neck, so lifting today was a little difficult. But, I missed squat day last week to do a bunch of homework, and this Saturday we’re finding our CFT (Crossfit Total, read about it there!), so I’m hoping to hit a new squat 1rep max then. I missed doing the CFT last September, so I don’t really have a basis of comparison, but I’m pretty excited about it. I have a good idea of where I’ll be, but maybe I’ll get an extra 5 or 10lbs somewhere. I also haven’t deadlifted for strength/weight in about a month. Hopefully one of the WODs this week will incorporate them, at least.

Strength:

Back Squat 1-1-1-1-1: 115(PR!)-115-115-115-115-120(f) I wish I had tried 120 earlier on. I psyched myself out about how difficult it was going to be, failed without hardly trying, and was gassed from the previous sets. Excited I hit 115 though, considering how hard I tried on 8/7 to get 115 and failed miserably, and how great the first rep of 115 felt.

Strict Press 5-5-5: 45-45-45. Just some simple volume with press work. I’ve really been trying to up my press movements lately. Every day I’ve been doing sets of pushups, as well as these crazy negatives, that I can’t even begin to explain.

Also, when I woke up this morning I noticed that Tyler had set up a pull-up bar in one of our doorways!! So excited about this! I jumped up on it this morning and did a strict pull-up UNASSISTED, with just the tiniest of frog-kicks at the top to get my chin over. That felt freaking awesome. Then I threw my laundry in the dryer, came out, and did three more! So great. I just tried a chin-up, and was able to do a rep perfectly strict. What?!?! Where is this back strength coming from all of a sudden!?

On a semi-related note, I weighed myself for the first time in about a month today, out of pure curiosity. I’m down 5.2lbs. My first gut reaction was the reaction that is so heavily ingrained in the female mind that it will be very difficult to ever overcome–“Hell yes!!!” But then I thought about it and that goes against everything that I’m trying to accomplish. I’m trying to gain muscle and get stronger (and in turn, bigger). I’m trying to put on weight, for the first time in my life. I’m going to assume that I’m just cutting fat faster than I’m able to build up muscle mass, because I’m a weeny. And I can assure you that I’m notactively trying to cut fat or lose weight. For example, last Thursday during my emotional meltdown, I ate a bowl of queso and corn chips for lunch, and then half a pint of goat milk ice cream for dinner. Between then and now I’ve had eggs and bacon (or sausage) for breakfast every single morning, a whole sweet potato with bacon grease and 40g of protein in almond milk after every work out, apples with (waaayyyy too much) almond butter for snacks, and some kind of meaty and/or goat-cheesy dinner every day. It’s pretty amazing that my weight is down, come to think of it. This also means that I’m roughly 10lbs away from being able to squat my body weight. Pretty amazing, looking at it that way. I think I’m going to stick to thinking that I’m losing fat faster than I’m gaining muscle, so I don’t bum myself out too much about it. On the one hand, weight loss is kind of cool, but on the other, it’s completely not what I’m working on at the moment. Weird, conflicting feelings!

Hello. I apologize that it’s currently Friday night, and the last I wrote was Tuesday. This week has been stressful for a multitude of reasons, and I’m just finally feeling more like myself again tonight.

On Wednesday I was extremely stressed out and upset, so I decided to go to Crossfit and try to work off some of my emotions. Well, pretty much the exact opposite of that happened. My emotions wrapped me up in a cocoon of shittyness, I failed miserably on my strict press, and had a horrible WOD. I was sore from dance Monday, and Tuesday’s WOD as well, so that didn’t help. I’m going to go over Wednesday’s WOD really quickly.

Strength:

Strict Press 2-2-2-2-2: 55(struggled mightily)-55(f on second rep)-55(f on second rep)-55(f on second rep)-55. I was upset from barely being able to get the second rep of 55 up on my first set, then I got more frustrated, and more angry, and more upset, and completely bombed. Last week I did 5 sets of 3 reps at 55lbs. Today I couldn’t even get it up twice, consecutively.

So basically, I was really upset with the press, and then I was all upset about the WOD while thinking about how upset I was at the press, and the weight felt so heavy and the box jumps felt like they took forever and I might as well have been dragging a dead body behind me while I was running, because I just couldn’t get over how awful it was and how slow I was going. This was literally the best example of how much your emotions outside of the gym can effect your performance inside the gym. Sometimes it’s not enough to #justshowup, and Wednesday was one of those days for me. I sat down with my favorite coach, Erika (who I now refer to as “Life Coach Erika”) and she reassured me and let me cry to her and gave me lots of good tips on how to improve, as well as reminding me that not every single workout is going to be a mindblowingly amazing progress-filled workout, and that sometimes you just have to chalk it up to having a bad day, especially if your mental state isn’t the best, pre-WOD.

So I took yesterday, Thursday, off, and worked on what I could, and went back into the gym today with a different attitude and killed the WOD. And the warmup had rope climbs, and we all know how much I love rope climbs!!! So that was fun. I subbed 2 strict, full-ROM push-ups instead of handstand holds, in order to work on my pressing muscles, as per Erika’s suggestion. I’m going to alternate subbing in handstand negatives and push-ups for the next few weeks and see where that gets me, plus a few sets of push-ups here and there at home, when I feel like it (like last night at 2am, when I couldn’t sleep).

2 Strict Pull-ups: Only one thin band for assistance!!! I have unassisted kipping pull-ups on lock, and I’m so close to getting strict unassisted!!! So excited. For the last 3 or 4 rounds I dropped down to one per round, because my wrists were KILLING me from the OHSs.

WOD for Reps: 100!

3 Rounds of:

Burpees for 1 minute

Rest for 1 minute

Row for Calories for 1 minute

Rest 1 minute

I was pretty consistent across the board. After the second round I glanced at my board and thought to myself “damn, I really wanted to get to 100, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.” So I set my goal to hit 90. Well turns out I’m really bad at eyeballing addition, because I was able to hit 100! I was amazed when I added everything up! When I went in at 4:30 the third best women’s score of the day was 106. A lot of the evening women smoked me, but I was pretty pumped seeing that. My calves are toast though, and I spent a lot of time rolling them out right after the WOD, and once I got home. My burpees went 18-16-17, and rowing cals were 17-16-16. Nice and consistentish.

Basically, this post is about how you will have a shitty workout, once in a while. Hell, Life Coach Erika said that “1 out of 3 workouts is going to suck,” and I think I have a higher success rate than that. Life happens, and sometimes you just can’t get out of your head enough, and you’re going to fail at things that you know with all of your heart that you can do. And you know what? That’s okay, and better than that, it’s normal. Monday, Tuesday, and Friday were awesome, and Wednesday was a shitshow. That’s 1 of 4, this week. I can handle that. And remember, if you’re a Crossfitter, when something like this happens, don’t be afraid to talk to your coaches. They have been through whatever kind of issue you’re having hundreds of times, and will always know exactly what to do to pick you up off of your face and get you wanting to go hard again. I am so thankful for Erika and all of the completely invaluable advice she always has, seemingly previously-prepared, at a moment’s notice.

Now, to go buy some wraps so my wrists will stop limiting my lifts, and hopefully my new Inov8s will show up at my doorstep tomorrow! Good feelings, all around.

Oh man oh man oh man. So much greatness so far this week. I’ve been feeling burned out with dance class. On Monday night, I nailed a couple moves that I haven’t been able to get, and I felt really confident throughout the entire class. I’m hoping this wasn’t just a one-time thing. I even got the Jade Split! It didn’t feel like I was completely opened up, but I got it on video and I’m actually way closer to a full split than it felt like I was. Pretty much exactly this:

But I’m just so happy that class went well, I don’t even care that it wasn’t fully open. I held it, and then I came home and did it on my pole at home to show Tyler! I stupidly took the video sideways, so if I can figure out a way to flip it I might post it sometime…maybe..probably not.

Then today at Crossfit I used the 53lbs kettlebell for the first time!!!!! And did all 30 of the pull-ups unassisted!!!

Strength:

EMOTM for 10 Minutes of:

2 Power Snatch: 55lbs. Y.E.S. A few were sketchy and I had two fails, but I redid the reps and felt awesome.

2 Handstand Negatives: Basically the starting point for the handstand push-up. You kick up into a handstand, and then slowly lower yourself down until your head touches the ground (or the abmat, in my case, so I didn’t slam my head into the ground when I got tired). The last 3 rounds were excruciating.

WOD for Time: 6:59

3 Rounds of:

21 Russian Kettlebell Swings: 53lbs, Level II. First time using the 53lb KB!! It was great! Each round I did all 21 unbroken. It definitely wasn’t as hard as I was expecting it to be. A couple of my swings came up well past eye-level. I’m excited to try to use it more now!!!

10 Pull-ups: Level II. I did all 30 pull-ups unassisted. And every rep counted. I’m so happy about this! I also tore the daylights out of my palms on the second round (picture below), so that slowed me down on the last round. But my time was right where the elite-elites’ were, so my scaling was perfect (down from 15 reps as Rx). I went about 4-2-3-1 for all three rounds, AND was able to cycle my kipping perfectly without any extra energy expense. 30 pull-ups is a lot for someone who just recently developed the strength to do them. I’m so happy.

Rest 1 Minute: Rx, boss.

Ouch.

My power snatch was 5lbs higher than last week, I used the 53lb KB for the first time, and I did all pull-ups unassisted, even though I had a band set up on stand-by, incase I couldn’t hang. But I did. And I did awesome. Couldn’t be more impressed with my performance today and last night, especially since I haven’t really been feeling 100% health-wise this week.

Tyler and I took a couple friends rock climbing today and we had an absolute blast. One of them grabbed my camera towards the end and took some killer photos of us climbing, and I feel awful because I hardly got any of her! I am so sore from the last ascent I did. We woke up at 6:30am today (I know, on a Sunday!!!) and headed to Carderock at 7 to set up a good climb spot that had easy to hard climbs accessible from the one point. Our spot was perfect.

Yesterday was a really awful day. It seemed like every hour there was something else that went wrong. I didn’t go to Crossfit because of lots of different things, but I am so SO glad that I wound up going today. Today was an infinitely better day, and I feel amazing. School was great, my break in between classes to sip a pumpkin spice latte and knit and decompress was great, Crossfit was more than great, my run after (yes, after!) Crossfit was great, and all of a sudden it’s 7:45pm and I can’t stop smiling.

Strength:

EMOTM for 10 Minutes:

2 Hang Squat Snatches: 45lbs. I literally wasn’t sure if I would be able to do 35lbs, so this was a big surprise.

2 Ring Dips: assisted, with only one yellow band!!!!!! This was the least assistance I’ve ever used. I’m so close to unassisted!!!

This was awesome. I probably could have done 50lbs, but I wasn’t sure since it has been months since I worked on squat snatches. They felt amazing and I only had one fail when I got a little too deep into my squat, and I just reset and redid the rep. Can’t even belieeeeve I was hang squat snatching that, after full snatching 50lbs last. So great!!!!! ALSO the ring dips!!!!! I am the happiest!!! So many super strong women at my box use one yellow band, and I look up to them all so much. And today, I was able to do sets of 2 full-depth ring dips with only one yellow band, barely even choked up!!! Gosh. I am just so happy. And this was only the strength portion!

WOD for Time: 11:23

This was AWFUL! But in the best way! The 800m run was great, and it took me 3:26. As long as I focus on my form, running doesn’t quite suck as badly as it used to. I was up with the top 10 in the group for finishing that run (a run that the coaches specifically said to run FAST, since it’s the first part and we should go balls out), but the wallballs destroyed me. I need to work on my form with them, because I think I don’t use my shoulders and arms enough, and try to rely too much on momentum coming up from the bottom of the squat. The 400m run was pretty bad, but I managed to sprint the first 200m and then really muscle my way through the second 200m, doing more of a jog, and cheered along some of the people I passed because I’m sure I was feeling just as bad as they were, but refused to stop. And today was just not my day for double-unders, but I pushed through. My speed rope was also all kinked and messed up, so I am going to blame it on that.

Then, on my way home, I decided I reallllly wanted to eat a sweet potato, but I didn’t have any goat butter. So when I parked, I stuffed my keys and a couple collars into the teenytiny pocket in the back of my shorts and ran to Whole Foods (where they didn’t have any goat butter, boo) and ran back, for another 980 meters. And it felt so great!!! So what did I do about my sweet potato predicament? Well, last night when I was having an awful day, I came home to Tyler cooking up my pound of bacon from the farmers’ market for me, to cheer me up (because he’s amazing), and he kept the grease! So I put some of it on my sweet potato and a little bit of coarse sea salt and HOLY CRAP I can’t even explain how amazing it was. Throughly enjoyed it, A+, will eat again.

I skipped crossfit yesterday. I woke up with a completely stuffed up head and nose, and all the post-nasal-drip in the world. It was so gross. I stayed home and got some good food in me and kocked out homework, so it was a day well spent. My legs and abs are so freaking sore from my squats and GHDs on Monday…I have no idea why. I didn’t do anything supremely different. But crapola. I couldn’t even do the v-ups during today’s warmup because my abs felt like they were ripping out of my stomach when I tried.

Strength:

Strict Press 3-3-3-3-3: 55-55-55-55-55. Yessss. Back up to full working set at 55lbs. Next week I’m going to try 2.5lbs heavier. Surprisingly they didn’t feel that bad. I definitely benefitted from last time, backing off and focusing on stabilizing my whole body and contracting every muscle. I felt so strong and stable, and felt like I could have done another set of 3, but I ran out of time. I can’t wait to try a little heavier next week!!

WOD for Time: 7:21

Those burpee box jumps were really difficult, coordination-wise. They were fun though, and I almost bit it on one rep, but was able to catch myself, thankfully. Since there were only 7 ring dips, I dropped down to one and a half bands, and didn’t choke them up as much as I normally do. They were rough. The last two rounds I was going 4-2-1. My triceps were screaming at me. I liked this. I’m determined to get ring dips unassisted, so anything with this sort of volume of them is welcome in my books! I can feel the progress.

I also wanted to take a minute to talk about how I felt today, pre-WOD. My sleeping has been off lately, so I’ve been really sluggish in the mornings, snoozing well past my “if you want to have time to do anything other than take your dog out, GET UP NOW” alarms, and struggling to keep focus during my classes. Sleep has always been so hard for me. Last night I had a dream I was a butler for the Queen of England, and I stuck a banana in the ground. The night before I had a dream I went to an old friend’s hotel/mansion and gave him a pair of shoes. The night before, I was saving kittens from robbers. Anyway, so I felt awful and tired and had no source of caffeine all day. It took literally everything in me to make myself go workout. And I am SO GLAD THAT I DID. Immediately following, (which is pretty much right now) I have all of this energy out of nowhere, my mood is better, I feel all-around great, and my performance on the press made me super happy. Seriously, they had it right when they started the #justshowup trend at the box. As long as you get in there, you’ll be extremely glad you did. Yay, endorphins!

Sooooo Tough Mudder. Yeah, that didn’t happen. We, along with over 1000 others, sat in our cars for 4 and a half hours trying to get in the parking area. The backups extended throughout the entirety of Frederick, MD, and even affected I-270 before it turned into Rt 15N. The event was disorganized and the location was NOT able to accomodate the 20,000+ people who were trying to access the site by two different roads which bottlenecked into the parking area. The only people who ended up running it were those who had the first couple heat times, and people who parked 2+ miles away (even though Tough Mudder told everyone that we WOULD BE TOWED if we parked anywhere other than their lot…HA!) and ran to the Mudder. The course was apparently awful once the rain came, and even the most elite athletes couldn’t finish in under 4 hours because you physically could not run in the 4 inch thick sticky mud that covered the course. It’s a mud run, I get it, but notice run. If the mud is so thick you can’t run through it, that negates the whole idea. Anyway, this is all second-hand knowledge, because we never even made it in the parking lot. That was apparently a blessing, because after the rain, cars were stuck in what was essentially a mud bowl, with the only entrance and exit at the “lip” of the bowl, with parking down in the center and on the lip of the other side. Cars were sliding into each other, being left overnight, and being towed out for $100 by some of the locals. One of Tyler’s friend’s cars was hit by three other cars while they were trying to exit the lot. I’m glad we at least avoided that mess. We thought leaving DC at 10:30am would give us plenty of time to get to Frederick, MD and check in by our start time of 2:20pm. If only.

So, we left around 4pm, and decided we’d reconvene at 5am, meet at a local mall at 5:45am, and try to be one of the first heats on Sunday morning, parking a few miles away and walking there. Well, around midnight the mayor of Frederick pulled the plug on Tough Mudder, revoking their permit stating that the traffic, the venue, and the parking were all just too awful, and the event would have to be cancelled. We found this out at 3:30am, when both me and my teammate Gina couldn’t sleep. Epic bummer, but honestly, it would have been just as bad if not WORSE on Sunday, because everyone from Saturday would be trying to get there as early as possible. The worst part is that Tough Mudder is stating that they decided to cancel Sunday because of safety/damages from the weather, NOT because the mayor shut them down. A little sketchy, Tough Mudder, a little sketchy. They’re offering refunds or transfers, plus discounts to any 2012 or 2013 TM races for all. Tyler and I are going to transfer ours to Tri-State in NJ on Sunday, October 21st, and the rest of our team is probably going to do the one next April in Maryland, and depending on how much of a discount they are going to offer, we might join them on that one.

TL;DR– Tough Mudder fucked up, big time. Lots of people didn’t get to run it, including us, so we are going to transfer to the New Jersey run at the end of October. It kind of sucks, but this one is going to be awesome, and has monster trucks and rope climbs and lots of awesome obstacles that the Mid-Atlantic didn’t. And I’ll get to see my awesome cousins, hopefully see one of my best friends and fitness/crafts inspiration, Erin, and hopefully hopefullythe caveman’s man himself will be able to do it with us!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, enough of that. Today I had 45 minutes to workout at the gym on campus. Just enough time to kill my legs, abs, and butt.

Strength:

Backsquat 3-3-3-3-3: 105-105-105-105-105. Pretty freaking happy about that, since last time I only did one full set of three and failed on the final rep of the second set. I spent less time warming up to that weight this time, and I think that made a big difference. I think my progression went 45-65-85 and then into the 5 sets of 105. Then after that, I did 20 reps of just the 45lb bar. Felt the burn.

GHD Sit-Ups: 40-20-10. Thought I was going to puke when I finished, so I hauled ass to the bathroom and sat there sweating and almost barfing for about 5 minutes. It passed, thankfully, and I went on to class. Haha. Oops.

I also had pole dancing class tonight, and we danced more today than we have in months and focused less on tricks, so I really liked tonight actually. I talked to my teacher about feeling disheartened with it lately, and she really helped my brain and is going to work with helping me get back into it and nail some new moves.

I don’t have any pictures of anything interesting, so I apologize, but maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow’s WOD is a Hero WOD in honor of 9/11. Probably going to pass out. Squat cleans, pull-ups, and running. I’m lamenting the death of my legs already.